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Friday, June 10, 2011

ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

ScienceDaily: Strange Science News


Engineers envision 2-dimensional graphene metamaterials and 1-atom-thick optical devices

Posted: 09 Jun 2011 11:15 AM PDT

Engineers have proposed the possibility of two-dimensional metamaterials. These one-atom- thick metamaterials could be achieved by controlling the conductivity of sheets of graphene, which is a single layer of carbon atoms.

Physicists hit on mathematical description of superfluid dynamics

Posted: 09 Jun 2011 11:15 AM PDT

A century after the discovery of superfluids, scientists using a powerful supercomputer have devised a theoretical framework that explains the real-time behavior of superfluids.

Magnetic bubbles reside at solar system edge, NASA probes suggest

Posted: 09 Jun 2011 10:21 AM PDT

Observations from NASA's Voyager spacecraft, humanity's farthest deep space sentinels, suggest the edge of our solar system may not be smooth, but filled with a turbulent sea of magnetic bubbles.

Chemistry with sunlight

Posted: 09 Jun 2011 09:33 AM PDT

Researchers can make the oxidation reactions used in the synthesis of organic molecules cleaner by hitching photovoltaics to electrochemistry. The idea is simple and yet it has huge implications. To underscore the simplicity of the idea, researchers used a $6 solar cell sold on the Internet and intended to power toy cars to run a variety of chemical reactions. If their suggestion were widely adopted by the chemical industry, it would eliminate the toxic byproducts currently produced by a class of reactions commonly used in chemical synthesis -- and with them the environmental and economic damage they cause.

How spiders breathe under water: Spider's diving bell performs like gill extracting oxygen from water

Posted: 09 Jun 2011 07:55 AM PDT

Water spiders spend their entire lives under water, only venturing to the surface to replenish their diving bell air supply. Yet no one knew how long the spiders could remain submerged until Roger Seymour and Stefan Hetz measured the bubble's oxygen level. They found that the diving bell behaves like a gill sucking oxygen from the water and the spiders only need to dash to the surface once a day to supplement their air supply.

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